The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Blue River (Rio Chama) – a Word Painting, by Janet Ruth

2/27/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Blue River (Rio Chama) by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA), 1935.
Blue River (Rio Chama) – a Word Painting

I.
Stony mesa sprawls
across the land beyond the river;
reclined here for centuries,
an aging painted beauty
burnt sienna and creviced in the sun.
Rough blankets woven of
umber and sepia rubble
stippled sap green with juniper,
higher up with piñon and oak,
drape pleated across her torso.
The blanket parts
at her bony bent knees
to reveal red rock skin
wrinkled and sagging
toward her feet;
the river flows
from between her thighs.

II.
The Río Chama flows constricted
from the seam among hills,
bends and twists upon herself,
merges and separates,
seeks a torturous, then smooth path,
sings
a symphony toward the Río Grande,
the Gulf of Mexico.
Cobalt mirror of sky
with streaks of lapis and pearl
disguises her origins--
vermilion silt from slick rock,
sharp lunar black granules from basalt,
china white glitters from sandstone,
suspended in clear liquor
distilled from cumulous clouds.
Watercolors flow south from Georgia’s brushes
down the serpentine riverbed.

III.
Manganese blue sky,
a wash laid on
behind and above the mesas
with a flat, even brush.
An invisible wind
blows
from hidden lips
at the round earth’s imagined corner.*
Scattered here and there,
with a round, sable point,
daubs of silver,
pearlescent shimmers of cloud
twist and stretch,
sail and thread
their ways across
changing cerulean heavens.

IV.
Cottonwoods bury gnarled toes
deep in sand and silt deposited
on the outer bank of a sinuous, rocky curve
where water drags her feet,
slows her race to the Gulf,
drops
part of her gravelly burden.
They drink the Río Chama,
armor the banks against her insistent assault,
these muscular trunks
clothed in graphite gray, furrowed bark,
raise sinewy arms,
paint malachite green shadows
on river’s skin.
Supple silvery wrists and grasping bony fingers
celebrate summer,
clad in elbow-length viridian gloves.
Gleaming leafy arrowheads
dance
on thin petioles before a downstream breeze,
point now at the river—source of life--
now at the sun—absorb its energy.
Secret in arrowhead-shaped shadows,
a thin gilt brushstroke of cadmium yellow
that will be their autumn raiment.

V.
On inside edge,
embraced by looping curve
of river’s sweep,
lies young, smooth-skinned
sand, swept down-river in glittering bits,
deposited as water slows
its path upon the moving curve,
a simple wash of gritty ochre granules.
She hosts a few equally young trees.
Young and impressionable,
she will lift her sandy skirts,
shake loose twisted rootlets and rounded pebbles,
migrate
downstream at the sinuous whim of the ancient river’s
change of direction,
back and forth across the valley
between rocky knees,
muscular trunks,
but always south toward
Big Bend and the Gulf.

Janet Ruth

*phrase from John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 7

Janet Ruth is an emeritus research ornithologist, living in New Mexico. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in Bird’s Thumb, Santa Fe Literary Review, two volumes of Poets Speak Anthology—HERS and WATER, and Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems.  Janet and her husband have sought out and photographed New Mexico locations that Georgia O'Keeffe painted to experience for themselves the magic they hold.
Picture
Rio Chama, photography by Janet Ruth (USA). Contemporary.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    Join us on Facebook:
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead